Jack and the hotdog
It started with a burnt smell.
Jack sat on the couch, a paper plate balanced on his knee, a hotdog skewered on his fork. He eyed it suspiciously, then took a bite, rolled the rest across the plate, stabbed it, and rolled it again.
“Stop playing with your food,” I said, pen scraping across the map as I charted our next route through the forest.
He didn’t look up. “Are you sure you saw the frog?”
“Dead sure.”
Jack nodded, tapping the hotdog, as if that somehow helped him think. “Okay. But… you don’t think he’s pulling a Gandalf, do you?”
“What?”
Jack lifted the fork, voice grave. “You. Shall not. Pass.”
No smile. He never smiled when quoting Tolkien.
The silence that followed wasn’t exactly awkward, more like someone had arrived early for something important and decided to lurk behind the couch.
I leaned back, arms crossed. “You think the frog’s guarding something?
Jack shrugged. “Could be. You ever seen a frog just sit there in a doorway for no reason?”
“Yes. They’re frogs.”
“Exactly.” He tapped the hotdog sharply. “Frogs don’t just stand guard for fun.”
I returned to the map, though I couldn’t stop picturing the frog in the doorway.
We were avoiding one particular route this time. We’d been held captive by an emu there once. Actually, more precisely, Jack was the one held captive, and I had to fight for his freedom.
The terms were simple:
If the emu beat me at chess, Jack would go free. Sounds easy enough, right? Except there was one problem: I couldn’t just let the emu win. The thing could read minds. I couldn’t fake a loss. It would know.
We played eight rounds. I won seven. The emu finally pulled one off, barely. Usually, I’d feel proud of my chess victories, but that time, winning felt almost repulsive - like I’d stolen something it needed. It didn’t gloat. Just scheduled a rematch, dismissed us with a nod and wandered off to brood in front of its Catherine the Great portrait.
That’s when the smell caught up, sharp, dry, and immediate. It snapped me back to the present.
I sniffed the air. “Do you smell that? Something’s burnt.”
Jack sniffed too, brow briefly furrowed, then went back to poking the hotdog.
“Nope,” he said. “Just hotdog juice.”
“That’s not a real thing.”
He forced a smile, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “More real than a monk frog.”
I turned toward the kitchen. The stove was off. The toaster was unplugged. Nothing in the trash bin was smoking. I checked the coffee machine. Empty. Cold.
When I turned back, Jack was holding a second hotdog.
I froze. “Where did that come from?”
He looked down at it, surprised. “Huh.”
He turned it over thoughtfully, a subtle red streak marking the plate.
“…Is that thread?” I asked.
Jack leaned closer. “Looks like silk.”
We stared at it in silence.
The smell grew sharper, more specific. Not food. Not plastic. Something older, like scorched parchment, or maybe a thousand-year-old incense stick lit by accident.
Jack adjusted his grip, holding it with two fingers, wary it might snap.
“I think,” he said carefully, “this is a robe.”
A weird flicker of déjà vu passed through me. I’d felt this fabric before, half-asleep, half-aware.
I rushed to the window.
The caterpillar was gone.
